9.15.04
It’s already late, so I’m writing tonight just as a matter of self discipline.
We did 18-month checkups in a village today--I took photos and held specimen jars for the most part. The people who didn’t show up we drove around and tracked down. Remarkably, we found everyone but four people. At one house, there were four women and about 20 young children. I took a couple pictures of them, and they were so excited and funny when I showed them to them on the digital camera screen. They thought it was so hilarious.
We’ve seen some pretty sick children, but there isn’t anything we can do really to help them all. Or any of them, even with their parents right there.
Driving today we saw lines of girls and young women carying huge loads of pottery, lots of boys out in donkey/goat-chewed fields hanging out or playing--a group lying down with their heads in a circle and splayed out like a snowflake.
The countryside is beautiful, green and lush and foggy in the mornings and almost always cloudy on the tip of the mountain that Soddo is built up against. There are tons of birds--bright yellow, pink, blue, orange, and I saw an iridescent turquoise songbird.
At one of the houses we stopped at one of the abundant small yellow butterflies flew in our van. I opened the door up and tried to swoop it out gently. It landed on my finger, so I pulled it out and blew on it to get it to fly away. My audience thought this was very funny.
We came back home for lunch--Andy and I had a loaf of bread each with PB and banana and a Mirinda and I had La Vache Qui Rit cheese. When we went out again, we went to a place nearby where we were yesterday, but in a grassy opening under a big tree, the community health worker had gathered together about 65 children 7 and under. And some of their parents. It was wild. We did more standardizing there, since the old Trachoma grader is being replaced, and for the purposes of the study, the grading has to be consistent. It was pretty fun. One little girl with an old shirt/handkercheif on her head became my special friend because I took a picture of her and showed it to her. For the next three hours she continued to try to be right in front of me, and finally at the end got up the courage to ask quietly, "Photo me?" A crowed gathered and she was a star when I did and showed her again. We kept pretty good, happy eye contact until we were in the car leaving. When I searched her out through the window, she got the happiest big smile to see me waving to her. She put her arm up in the air and kept it there. It was nice.
Andy palpated a few tummies today, because some seemed unusually large. In infants it would have been okay, but these were 5 to 8 or 9 year olds. They looked pregnant, but nothing else looked like Kwashiorkor.
Tonight I showered for the first time since Addis. Our place has water that has never disappears (and hot, to boot!) and pretty stable electricity. Emily ate dinner with us here at Bekele Molla tonight and showered, since they hardly ever have water, and almost never hot, down at the office.
I was tired today and Andy is already in bed behind me. I’ve got to go to sleep now.
We did 18-month checkups in a village today--I took photos and held specimen jars for the most part. The people who didn’t show up we drove around and tracked down. Remarkably, we found everyone but four people. At one house, there were four women and about 20 young children. I took a couple pictures of them, and they were so excited and funny when I showed them to them on the digital camera screen. They thought it was so hilarious.
We’ve seen some pretty sick children, but there isn’t anything we can do really to help them all. Or any of them, even with their parents right there.
Driving today we saw lines of girls and young women carying huge loads of pottery, lots of boys out in donkey/goat-chewed fields hanging out or playing--a group lying down with their heads in a circle and splayed out like a snowflake.
The countryside is beautiful, green and lush and foggy in the mornings and almost always cloudy on the tip of the mountain that Soddo is built up against. There are tons of birds--bright yellow, pink, blue, orange, and I saw an iridescent turquoise songbird.
At one of the houses we stopped at one of the abundant small yellow butterflies flew in our van. I opened the door up and tried to swoop it out gently. It landed on my finger, so I pulled it out and blew on it to get it to fly away. My audience thought this was very funny.
We came back home for lunch--Andy and I had a loaf of bread each with PB and banana and a Mirinda and I had La Vache Qui Rit cheese. When we went out again, we went to a place nearby where we were yesterday, but in a grassy opening under a big tree, the community health worker had gathered together about 65 children 7 and under. And some of their parents. It was wild. We did more standardizing there, since the old Trachoma grader is being replaced, and for the purposes of the study, the grading has to be consistent. It was pretty fun. One little girl with an old shirt/handkercheif on her head became my special friend because I took a picture of her and showed it to her. For the next three hours she continued to try to be right in front of me, and finally at the end got up the courage to ask quietly, "Photo me?" A crowed gathered and she was a star when I did and showed her again. We kept pretty good, happy eye contact until we were in the car leaving. When I searched her out through the window, she got the happiest big smile to see me waving to her. She put her arm up in the air and kept it there. It was nice.
Andy palpated a few tummies today, because some seemed unusually large. In infants it would have been okay, but these were 5 to 8 or 9 year olds. They looked pregnant, but nothing else looked like Kwashiorkor.
Tonight I showered for the first time since Addis. Our place has water that has never disappears (and hot, to boot!) and pretty stable electricity. Emily ate dinner with us here at Bekele Molla tonight and showered, since they hardly ever have water, and almost never hot, down at the office.
I was tired today and Andy is already in bed behind me. I’ve got to go to sleep now.
posted by Johanna Buchert Smith at 3:54 AM
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